The S. S. Barbaric lives up to its name as three of its passengers are strangled en route from New York to England. The first is the irascible millionaire Alonzo Holt, who wouldn’t have sailed if he had known that the son he never knew, his estranged second wife, and the charlatan who used to conduct seances for him were aboard.

While there is an occasional good sentence — for example, “The curious delusion that the ability to amass wealth implies a disposition to distribute it in charity, deserving or undeserving, attracts shoals of beggars to the millionaire’s door” — the authors have overwritten throughout. Worse, none of the characters ring true, except for the bridge fanatic, nicknamed Sitting Bull. Still worse, the hero spots the murderer through a clue provided by the heroine, who could not possibly have been in possession of the information she gave him.

Skip this one unless you’re a real nostalgia buff.

— Reprinted from The MYSTERY FANcier, Vol. 11, No. 3, Summer 1989.

BIBLIOGRAPHIC NOTES: This is co-author Dorothy Rice Sims only entry in Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV. Valentine Williams was a far more prolific writer of crime ad detective fiction. There is a very extensive article about him on Mike Grost’s Classic Mystery and Detection website. Highly recommended!

PostScript. It belatedly occurred to me that I had been lazy, and that I should have tried harder find out more about Mrs. Sims, if I could. It turns out that there is quite a bit more to say.

“Dorothy Rice Sims was born June 24, 1889 at Asbury Park NJ. From her teens, Dorothy was active in competition, holding the motorcycle speed championship for women (1911) and becoming one of the first U.S. aviatrixes, in which capacity she met and married ACBL Hall of Fame Member P. Hal Sims.

“She was a noted sculptress, painter and author in fields other than bridge, though she wrote several bridge books. She is widely credited with inventing the psychic bid, but probably initiated only the popular name for it. However, she wrote her first book on the subject, Psychic Bidding, 1932.”

Note that one of the characters that Bill mentions is a fanatic bridge player.

I’ve never been tempted to read the paperback I have of this book, although I’ve owed my copy for many, many years. I’m even less likely now having read Bill’s review. But I’d welcome the opportunity to watch the movie, though, if it exists. No one has commented about it on its IMDb page, nor are there any external reviews.

On the other hand, seven people have given it a rating (for an average of 5.4 stars out of 10), so perhaps not all hope is lost.

Valentine Williams was a popular writer of thrillers, and taken as a thriller and not a detective story this is entertaining, especially if you like the shipboard setting — which I do. Williams was the creator of the long running Clubfoot series (Christie sent up his series about Desmond and Francis Okewood and Dr. Von Grundt in PARTNERS IN CRIME), and really an entertaining writer overall, a bit more literate than most.

As you might guess from the title they weren’t trying for a fair play Golden Age detective story to begin with.

I’ll grant his style is old fashioned, but still pleasurable to read and some of his later Von Grundt novels and stand alones like MR. RAMOSI are still entertaining. For that matter the early Okewood books are good examples of the wartime (WWI) spy novel, and Dr. Von Grundt is really one of the more memorable villains of the period.

But he is not a detective story writer and the pleasures to be found are in the dramatics and other factors and not the puzzles. He’s largely forgotten today though the availability of many of his books as e-books have brought him back a little.

I enjoyed FOG. It’s no classic, and it is old fashioned, but it is a good tale and Williams a good story teller. The characters ring as true as any thriller of the era and as I pointed out its not meant to rival Agatha Christie or Dorothy Sayers in terms of fair play.

I seem to recall Barzun and Taylor were relatively kind to Williams who had a readable and pleasant style for thrillers a bit more literate than the run of the mill. I would rank him along Francis Beeding in where he fits in the pantheon of he era, better than Dennis Wheatley, but no Buchan or Yates.

If you like British thrillers of this era Williams is worth reading. I found this one a diverting read for its time period. Readers at the time found it memorable enough it was republished in an early paperback when quite a few writers were not. It is certainly a bit better written than most of this era as far as literacy goes and I found the characters no more stock than any book of its kind from that period and that school.

But then I like an old fashioned nostalgic tale which this is, so I agree with Bill to that extent.

I read both “Fog” and “The Orange Divan” by Williams years ago, but unfortunately didn’t write about either of them for the website. Found them dull, much as Deeck seems to have done, at least in the case of “Fog”. Maybe “Fog” should be re-read!

By contrast, his Mr. Treadgold stories are lively and show good plotting. They are real detective tales.

***
Had no idea there was a film version of “Fog”. Thank you for this information.

Its director Albert S. Rogell has almost never been written about by film historians – even though he has 124 entires in the imdb.
The only film seen here: “Air Hawks” (1935), a lively, fun air adventure / science fiction thriller. The 1930’s were a very atypical time for science fiction films.

Some of Rogell’s silents sound interesting: the racecar film “Super Speed”, the Western “Red Hot Leather”, the air drama “The Flying Marine”.

One thing about which I definitely agree with David: Valentine Williams was a literate writer.

Williams’ writing as a whole was praised by Kipling. Howard Haycraft in “Murder for Pleasure” summed up Williams’ work as “highly superior”, and wished Williams made more excursions into the realm of the detective tale, rather than the thriller.

My impression of Williams: he was what in 1930 was considered a “professional writer”. Such authors cultivated a wide variety of skills, and were always looking to improve their craftsmanship in a host of directions.

That’s what I meant by more novelistic to a great extent, and I agree. Sadly some writers of that style lose a little of the energy of an Edgar Wallace or many of his imitators though.

I’m reminded of Graham Greene’s review of Edgar Wallace where he describes Wallace ignored at a cocktail part while everyone fawned over literary lion Hugh Walpole (the Herries Saga) who is virtually unknown today. Many of Williams books were closer to Walpole’s MAN WITH THE RED HAIR, THE KILLER AND THE SLAIN, or ABOVE THE DARK CIRCUS than what we usually associate with thrillers today. All three of those Walpole’s can be had in e-book form and RED HAIR was made into a good film with Charles Laughton.

But I agree Williams approach was more that of a professional (like Vance) than strictly a genre writer. I think at novel length the detective story form may have been too confining in terms of writing for his ambitions (whether he fulfilled them or not). Even Sayers struggles with the demands of novel versus detective novel in GAUDY NIGHT and NINE TAILORS (though I consider both triumphs).